Kristel Taukave was hoping to shorten her daily commute from San
Leandro to Berkeley. She went on Craigslist, and found a handful of
two-bedroom apartments in her price range scattered throughout the East
Bay. She contacted each landlord by e-mail. A waterfront apartment in
Emeryville, a condo in Berkeley with a washer-dryer and hardwood
floors, or a top-floor unit in a Walnut Creek building with ample
storage and a pool, each for under $1000, all seemed too good to be
true. And they were.
In response to three different requests for more information,
Taukave says she received three identical e-mails from a Pastor Blanca
Cococa. “I thought maybe she made a mistake sending the e-mail multiple
times.”
The e-mail, written in broken English and full of typos, explained
that Pastor Cococa had left the country with the only copy of the keys
to the unit:
“So me and daughter are here in United Kingdom on a Missionary Work
and am with the keys of the house will want to rent out now. … Hope
you are okay with the price of ($850 PER MONTH) with hydro, heat
laundry facilities, air condition, Internet connection and so on. i
look forward to hearing from you ASAP.”
Taukave was aware that the e-mail was a little strange, but she held
out hope that things would work out in the end. She really wanted this
apartment. She filled out the rental application and e-mailed the
Pastor her personal information. Luckily for Taukave this didn’t
include anything along the lines of bank account or credit card
numbers.
In the meantime, Taukave drove by some of the rentals on her list.
The South Berkeley condo that Pastor Blanca Cococa claimed to own had a
for-sale sign out front. Now totally suspicious, Taukave gave the
Realtor a call.
She learned that the condo was not for rent for $850. It was for
sale for $269,000.
Thanks to Taukave’s call, the real estate agent, Michael Valva,
quickly figured out that his original Craigslist ad offering the condo
for sale had been copied and pasted into a scam ad.
A recent look at Craigslist uncovered numerous other scam rental ads
linked to existing East Bay properties, all offered at a price
dramatically lower than the going market rate.
Posing as a would-be renter, a reporter e-mailed individuals posting
four such rentals. One turned out to be Pastor Cococa. Two others were
also “missionaries,” this time “working” in West Africa. They each sent
along an “application,” an enthusiastic, if not convoluted story, and a
blessing from God.
Two of the e-mails included Nigerian phone numbers. When contacted
by phone, the young man who answered asked a series of “landlord-ish”
questions about monthly income and “reasons for leaving your current
apartment.” He then tried to make arrangements to have first and last
month’s rent and security deposit wired via Western Union. The reporter
said he’d think about it.
Anyone with an e-mail account is no doubt familiar with these
“advance-fee fraud” scams which more often than not seem to come from
Nigeria, and traditionally promised large sums of money in exchange for
assisting troubled African royalty. Sam Olukoya, a Nigerian journalist,
says that young men ranging from “primary school dropouts to university
graduates” fill Nigeria’s cybercafes by night, working on the
scams.
Olukoya says that only a tiny fraction of Nigerians are
“fraudsters,” but “very many people have become rich overnight from
Internet scams and this seems to encourage more and more people to take
to the crime.”
When one scam gets stale, they adapt. The advance-fee fraud, once
known as “The Spanish Prisoner” con, was even being attempted from West
Africa by snail mail. But the Internet makes such scams faster,
cheaper, and more prolific.
From Milwaukee to the Great Salt Lake, reports of similar rent scams
are making the news. One variation currently visible on Craigslist
under apartments for rent in the East Bay was also described in a
recent post on the site Consumerist.com. The fake landlords
(scamlords?) send the following e-mail to interested renters:
“We try to keep our costs and our tenants costs to a minimum so we
can rent our units fast and keep them rented.”
Whereupon we are invited to click on a link and fill out a form for
a free credit check. Victims of this scam willingly hand over credit
card and bank account info.
“What I don’t understand is how Craigslist allows someone to take an
ad and amend it to their own ends,” said Valva, the real estate agent
whose ad was copied by the scamlord Taukave encountered. Valva says he
took his honest condo listing off Craigslist to avoid any confusion
with the copycat version. Valva said he tried to contact Craigslist to
alert them to the problem, but when he received an automatically
generated reply explaining the high volume of customer complaints the
free, online classified site receives, Valva decided it wasn’t worth
the trouble to jump through any more hoops.
Valva says he’d like Craigslist to be more responsive to his
concerns, which he imagines are concerns shared by his colleagues in
the Realtor community.
Craig Newmark, founder and head of customer service for the site,
responded promptly to an e-mail regarding the scam. He requested links
to the offending ad and 33 minutes later he sent the following
e-mail:
“Thanks! Already gone, looking for more by same guy —
Craig”
Yet Newmark declined to answer questions regarding the scams, such
as: How can Craigslist protect renters and Realtors?
As for Taukave, she’s now staying put in San Leandro. “I’m pretty
naive when it comes to this sorta thing, but I learned my lesson.”
